‘Help us get out of this ugly place’: Teens imprisoned in Venezuela plead for release
Theana Urbina reads the handwritten letter: “We can’t last another day,” says the text signed by his son, a 16-year-old student arrested after the presidential elections in Venezuela and others seven teenagers accused of terrorism.
More than 2400 people were detained during the protests that broke out after the disputed re-election of the president Nicolas Maduroamid accusations of fraud by the opposition. One of the total hundred were minors.
A group of 86 boys have already been released, but it is estimated that around 30 are still being held. Miguelson Urbinonext to Yenderson, Daiber, Héctor, Bleider, Ángel, Diomer and Alexanderwho also signed the letter, remain at the police station in Caracas waiting for his freedom.
“One day I will leave this ugly place, this hell where no one belongs”follow the text which Urbino he read in a broken voice at a protest for his son’s freedom this Thursday outside the public prosecutor’s office in Caracas. “This is not life, how can you pay for something that neither my colleagues nor I did?”
The protests organized between July 29 and 30 have gone 27 dead -among them two soldiers- and some 200 injured. They were detained labeled as “terrorists”. his own Mature.
ON Miguel Urbina He was arrested on August 2 while eating candy at the entrance to his house. “Two officials came and took him away,” says his mother, a 32-year-old manicurist, who says he did not participate in the demonstrations.
She assures that her son is isolated along with the other teenagers in an area where at least they don’t have contact with the regular inmates. ““He told me he was afraid”keep going “My son is not a criminal, he is not a terrorist,” he insists.
This Thursday, they submitted a document to the public prosecutor’s office requesting their release.
“We are deprived of our freedom, imprisoned as if we were criminals or dangerous to society, we are innocent of all the charges against us,” the letter, written in the school’s handwriting, continues.
Relatives say that before being transferred to the current place of detention, some of The teenagers gave them electric shocks and put a sack over their heads and threatened to fill it with tear gas.
Also 16 years old, Angel Moisés Ramírezson Nerida Ruiz39 years, it was almost 60 days in custody. She hugs a photo of her eldest son dressed in school uniform.
He was taken from home while he was caring for his one and a half year old brother. They accused him of “qualified theft, incitement to hatred, terrorism and resistance to authority”. This after one of the motorbikes looted from the warehouse was placed on the road to go to his house.
“It starts next week,” he says, his senior year of high school Ruiz. “And that’s his biggest worry, that he’s starting to teach and how he’s going to manage,” emphasizes the mother, who works as a cashier in a furniture store.
Due to his family’s financial difficulties Miguel Urbina He didn’t study, his mother points out.
“Everyone in my house has to work, my husband works, I work and my son worked, learning carpentry,” she says.
“I didn’t study, but I wanted to start studying to repeat my third year” of high school, he agrees. Urbinowhich calls for the release of all detained minors.
He is holding a piece of paper with a request for freedom Miguelthe eldest of his four children.
“The only thing we ask for is justice,” the letter reads. “Please help us get out of this ugly place, support us, we can’t last another day in this place, we are just young people who have nothing to do with what is happening in the country, we are not terrorists.”
(AFP)
